Anti-Banking Quotes

The quotes below are from across time and the political spectrum. Since before the formation of the United States, there were citizens who believed that the greatest danger to society were bankers.

The Bankers Manifesto:

We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.

Organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them.

At the coming Omaha convention to be held July 4, 1892, our men must attend and direct its movement or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome.

This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination (conspiracy) and legislation.

The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.

When, through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers.

People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.

The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.

By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished.

Abraham Lincoln, after turning down bankers` demands for up to 36% interest on war loans, printed almost 450 million dollars of interest-free government `greenbacks` to fund the Union Army in the Civil War. It worked so well that the bankers became infuriated. Here is an astonishingly candid excerpt from an editorial in the London Times in 1865…

“If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated [sic] down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”

Lincoln intended to implement his new financial system after the War and declared, “The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest.”

“I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institution in the rear. Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe.” – Abraham Lincoln

“The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the US, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world.”
Otto von Bismark chancellor of Germany 1876

Another president who spoke out against the bankers was James Garfield. “Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realise that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” Garfield was assassinated in 1881, only weeks after releasing this statement.

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” – Lord Acton 1834-1902

A great outspoken opponent of the Federal Reserve was Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee in the 1930s. After two attempts on his life McFadden was later poisoned at a banquet, while in the process of impeaching the Board of the Federal Reserve. One of his attacks on the Fed can be found in the Congressional Record, House pages 1295-96 on June 10, 1932:

“Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. [They have] cheated the Government [and the people] of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. [Their] depredations [and] iniquities… have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government.”

Thomas Jefferson said, in the debate over the recharter of the Bank Bill (1809), “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” http://www.counterthink.com/025684.html

“I sincerely believe … that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” (Thomas Jefferson)

Within the financial ruling class, political leadership does not usually come from the richest hedge fund speculators, even less among the ‘junior bankers.’ Political leaders come from the public and private equity banks, namely Wall Street — especially Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and others. They organize and fund both major parties and their electoral campaigns. They pressure, negotiate and draw up the most comprehensive and favorable legislation on global strategies (liberalization and deregulation) and sectoral policies (reductions in taxes, government pressure on countries like China to ‘open’ their financial services to foreign penetration and so on). They pressure the government to ‘bailout’ bankrupt and failed speculative firms and to balance the budget by lowering social expenditures instead of raising taxes on speculative ‘windfall’ profits. James Petras http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Petras_James/Who_Rules_America%3F.html

“If the people only understood the rank injustice of our Money and Banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.” President Andrew Jackson http://www.harmlesswise.com/conspiracy/quotes/5/printable “A warehouseman, taking goods deposited with him and devoting them to his own profit, either by use or by loan to another, is guilty of a tort, a conversion of goods for which he is liable in civil, if not in criminal, law. By a casuistry which is now elevated into an economic principle, but which has no defenders outside the realm of banking, a warehouseman who deals in money is subject to a diviner law: the banker is free to use for his private interest and profit the money left in trust. . . . He may even go further. He may create fictitious deposits on his books, which shall rank equally and ratably with actual deposits in any division of assets in case of liquidation.” – Elgin Groseclose, Director of the Institute for International Monetary Research 1934

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon Boneparte http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/napoleon_bonaparte_quote_0d4b

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. – President Woodrow Wilson after he helped pass the Federal Reserve Act.

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.” – James Madison, President of the United States

“All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” (John Adams)

“U.S.A.’s balance of payments deficits is so strong and irreversible, that we must accept that at some future date there will be a run against the U.S. Dollar. Probably the kind of disorderly run that precipitates a global financial crisis.” – Dr. Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, year 2005.

“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist

“Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile . . . Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws . . . Usury once in control will wreck any nation.” – William Lyon MacKenzie King, former Prime Minister of Canada (who also succeeded in nationalizing the Bank of Canada).

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected the promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world-government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the National auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” – David Rockefeller, in an address to the Trilateral Commission meeting, 1991.

“A fiat monetary system allows power and influence to fall into the hands of those who control the creation of new money, and to those who get to use the money or credit early in its circulation. The insidious and eventual cost falls on unidentified victims who are usually oblivious to the cause of their plight. This system of legalized plunder (though not constitutional) allows one group to benefit at the expense of another. An actual transfer of wealth goes from the poor and the middle class to those in privileged financial positions.” (Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), “Paper Money and Tyranny”)

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.” (Paul Warburg, drafter of the Federal Reserve Act)

“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.” (Mayer Amschel Rothschild)

“Ideologically, [sound money] belongs in same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.” In the name of civil liberty and civilization itself, the Fed should be abolished. (Ludwig von Mises).

Senator, Warren G. Harding, who was elected to the Presidency in 1920, said in a 1921 Congressional inquiry that the Reserve was a private banking monopoly. He said: “The Federal Reserve Bank is an institution owned by the stockholding member banks. The Government has not a dollar’s worth of stock in it.” His term was cut short in 1923 when he mysteriously died, leading to rumors that he was poisoned. This claim was never substantiated because his wife would not allow an autopsy.

In a letter to Edward M. House (President Woodrow Wilson’s closest aide), dated November 23, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “The real truth of the matter is, and you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

“Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.” (Daniel Webster)

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” (Lord John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), renowned British economist).

Thomas Edison observed in 1921:
If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. . . . It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People.